Description: This paper describes the development and construction of persistency tables for use by the actuary in valuing future expenses and in various types of forecasting. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1960, Vol. 12, No. 34.

Description: This article shows some vital statistics of Canada including births, deaths, marriages and divorces per 1000 population along with motor vehicle deaths in the years 1972, 1975, 1978 and 1981.

Description: This article provides comments on some of the economic and demographic forecasts in the 1976 OASDI Report Social Security.

Description: The article highlights the Northampton Table which is the earliest mortality table to be constructed especially for life insurance premiums. It contrasts the life expectancies of the Northampton Table with those of population tables one and two centuries later.

Description: This is about The Federal Register of October 18, 1982 announcement by the Veterans Administration concerning USGLI premiums. The premiums were based on the American Experience Mortality Table at 3 /2% interest which overestimates mortality and underestimates the interest rate. This article discusses the ramifications of this.

Description: The article is an editorial on annuitant mortality over sixty years, 1923, 1943, 1963 and 1983.

Description: This article is about war mortality from an 1859 copy of The Spectator, by the Institute of Actuaries, J.I.A. 8 1859, 268-284.

Description: In the fall of 1983, the Actuaries’ Club of the Southwest set an example that other clubs and writers would do well to follow. Its president proposed as one of its projects a “history of the Club and actuarial practices in the Southwest.” Would that other laborers in the historical vineyard could be half as fortunate!

Description: This article shows a comparison of the growth rates of the S&P 500 common stock index vs. the U.S. Consumer Price Index over various 5 and 10 year periods.

Description: This article shows excerpts, edited into Q&A format from FIASCO’s September 1983 front page interview with James C. H. Anderson, conducted in London last summer by this newsletter’s London Correspondent, Gary Chamberlin. The interview addresses Mr. Anderson's beliefs that drastic changes are necessary if the U.S. life insurance industry is to enjoy a fruitful survival into the next century.